Polish president pardons former head of anti-corruption agency

WARSAW, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Polish President Andrzej Duda has
pardoned a former head of the country's anti-corruption agency
who was found guilty of abuse of power, a gesture slammed by the
opposition as politically motivated.

A Polish court sentenced Mariusz Kaminski in March to three
years in jail for actions he took while head of the agency in
2007 to combat corruption. He had appealed against the verdict.

Kaminski is close to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the
conservative, eurosceptic Law and Justice party (PiS) which has
just returned to power after winning an Oct. 25 parliamentary
election. Kaminski is now due to take up a post in the new
administration.

PiS was last in government in 2007, when Kaczynski was prime
minister and Kaminski ran the anti-corruption agency.

"In the president's view, this case had a political
character," presidential adviser Andrzej Dera told reporters.

"People who fight corruption ... deserve special
protection," Dera said, adding that Kaminski was a very honest
man whose integrity had never been open to question.

Duda became Poland's president earlier this year after
winning an election with the backing of PiS.

Critics said Kaminski and his associates had pursued graft
with excessive zeal when in office, using methods they said
sometimes circumvented laws and also hounded innocent people.

Kaminski argued that corruption was a blight on Polish
democracy that had to be tackled thoroughly.

Poland's new prime minister, Beata Szydlo, has named
Kaminski to take responsibility for the secret services in her
new administration.

The main opposition Civic Platform (PO) party, which
governed Poland from 2007 until last month, said the
presidential pardon was aimed at freeing Kaminski up to assume
his new role without fear of eventual conviction.

"This (pardon) is an unprecedented attack on the rule of
law," said Slawomir Neumann, head of the PO's parliamentary
caucus.
(Reporting by Jakub Iglewski; Editing by Gareth Jones)